


A Spiral Unending

by calliopesbox



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Eventual Happy Ending, It/Its Pronouns For Michael | The Distortion (The Magnus Archives), Multi, Or Does It, Time Loop, eventually romance and happiness is bestowed upon them all it’s just mildly traumatizing, everything turns out just fine in the end, gross worm action in general, jon swallows a worm, just kidding it doesn’t, major chara death DOES exist here but it DOESN’T LAST FOREVER, time loops again and again in ep 39
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29749080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calliopesbox/pseuds/calliopesbox
Summary: Everything fell apart as soon as the first worm burrowed it’s way into Martin’s mind.Not when Jane’s swarm broke the surface of the Institute, and certainly not when they invaded the eyes and mouths and bodies of the archival team, leading them to their inevitable and awfully drawn-out demises.No. It was when that fear - that Fear - clutched him in it’s maw and shook him with such a strength he would be unable to pry himself from it without a miracle.Michael’s offer was nothing short. Eventually, it would prove itself a miracle, too.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Michael | The Distortion, Martin Blackwood & Michael | The Distortion & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Michael | The Distortion
Comments: 17
Kudos: 24





	1. Something Goes Amiss

**Author's Note:**

> Hey friends!! Real quick, here’s a cohesive content warning list for this chapter without giving too much away:
> 
> • blood and gore, mostly due to worms  
> • major character death
> 
> Have fun and don’t be too spooked just yet!! <3

“Urgh! Ugh...”

A spider. Bulbous and gangly, its black and thinly barbed legs delicately and deliberately placed in it’s long and silky web on the bookshelf after fleeing the Archivist’s shoulder.

“I see you.”

Tantalizingly close, Jon reaches for a book on his desk. It’s hefty, but it would do the trick in both hands. He raises it slowly above his head, then whacks the web and sends the spider three shelves down - taking the shelves with it.

The wood splits and splinters, sending a plume of old dust and dead bugs flying straight into Jon’s face. It’s the clatter of boxes against the wood floor along with his noises of exclamation that alerts Sasha. A door opens.

She enters briskly, eyes immediately focused on first the mess, and then the mildly disturbed Jon. “Alright?”

He lowers the book, still clutched tightly in his hands.

“Ah... yeah. A spider.”

“A spider?”

Sasha shakes her head at the mess. Someone would have to fix that later, and she has a feeling it’s going to be her that notifies someone to do it. She wasn’t ready for another lecture from the big man.

“I tried to kill it,” Jon explains, less than dignified, “but the shelf collapsed.”

“I swear, cheap shelves are...” She allows herself a quick breath of frustration before smiling half-encouragingly.

“Did you get it?”

“Ah...” Jon, unwilling to encounter the spider again had it survived, carefully peeks around the debris and settling dust. His voice is full of disgust at the memory of its sleek body pressed against his shoulder; and for god knows how long, too. It could have been sitting there the whole time he was recording that statement, just out of his peripheral.

God, he hates spiders. Of course, he finds spiders specifically are attached to some awful memories he is not yet ready to discuss, much less confront; but, truly, he hates all things that wriggle and writhe their way into places they shouldn’t. It makes his skin itch. He reaches up a hand to scratch just below his collar. That’s one thing that won’t leave him easy.

“I hope so. Think so. Nasty looking thing.”

“Well,” Sasha laughs, in a mostly futile attempt to brighten Jon’s mood, “I won’t tell Martin.”

Martin already knows. He’s barely making his way back from the break room - having poured himself yet another cup of water to keep his nerves from snapping - when he sees it.

He’s been trying to ignore the pin pricking feeling of dread up his back and neck for weeks. The anxiety renders him unable to think about anything else but Jane’s sudden absence, which is maybe more disturbing than her presence. Just maybe. A worm. Fat, and grey, and in terrible condition.

He swears he hallucinates it (hallucinations don’t seem too out of the ordinary anymore, to be frank), but there it is, wriggling slow and lonely. He gapes at the sight, the mug of subpar water shaking in his hands. A scream sounds in the other room, and he drops it entirely. By some miracle, the glass doesn’t shatter, but it spills the water absolutely everywhere it bounces.

“Oh, dear,” he mutters to himself, and frantically looks around for something to clean it all up with. Nothing makes itself readily apparent to him, and so he heads briskly in the direction of the scream, promising himself to wipe it up later, if it hasn’t already sunk into the wood by then.

He can hear arguing (Jon is one of them, surely. He knows his voice well when he’s angry) fumbling through files, and metal bangs against the floor every so often. He steels himself to head inside and is paled by what he finds.

“Guys, is everything - oh, Christ!”

Worms everywhere. Absolutely _everywhere._ To say they swarmed the shelves would be an understatement. They _were_ the shelves now, starving bodies impossibly wriggling up every inch of the rotting wood. He screams, rightfully, and Jon hushes him swiftly with a demand.

“Shut up, and get the extinguishers!”

Martin can’t peel his eyes from the disgusting scene. He wants to throw up. He wants to curl up in his bed; safe, at home, alone. Mostly, he wants to leave.

“What?”

“The CO2! Get the goddamn CO2!”

“Right, right, right, right,” Martin gulps, a scratched record fumbling for the next lyric. He scrambles to take the gravity of it all in before he answers, but does not move, frozen in fear. “Yep.”

_“Now!”_

Martin does as he’s told. Running as far as he can from the worms, which now burst from the wall like ants from a drowning hill, he fumbles for the canisters that could save all three of them - if only he was fast enough. Martin, of course, is not fast enough. The worms have spread too far to be manageable.

He sprays the white substance as fast as he can over the whole of shelves, aiming wherever his trembling arms will let him, but they’re already spreading to the floor. Jon stomps on one and finds himself sickened at the way it squishes and spreads warmly beneath his soles.

“There’s too many,” he calls to the others. “Just keep spraying!”

Sasha’s voice anchors him, but not for very long. He is petrified at the realization that this impossibly large infestation must have a source. And it is absolutely her.

Jane had found him again. He led her to the Archives, and she aimed to finish what she started. Knocks on the door play out in his mind, a gravelly voice urging him to come out of his apartment. A song, beneath that voice, pleading him to stay. To open up. To succumb.

He almost did. There was a moment in which the hivesong was too beautiful to ignore, the prospect too perfect to be true and yet so real he could almost feel it sliding beneath his fragile skin and burying itself in the vessels and infilled holes of his heart.

Martin wants to belong. He so desperately wanted to be wanted that he considered, for just a moment, becoming a home.

And yet the thing that stopped him from removing the towels stuffed underneath each creaking doorway was not his small group of coworkers he wanted to consider his family. It was not the thought of his ailing mother, who held nothing but malice for him, that protected him from opening the door. Not even the thought of never gaining her acceptance prevented him from swatting away each crawling creature he felt, real or imaginary.

It was not the retriever down the street he passed on his early morning commute, or the kindly gentleman on the bus, or the cashier at the petrol station that always seemed to comment something pleasant on his appearance that day, to remember his name when no one else did; and, if they did, it was out of scorn, it was out of spite. It was to reprimand something he had done wrong rather than praise him for something gone right. It was his fear.

It seemed silly, now, to imagine not feeling enough for even a colony of mindless insects. But his fear of inadequacy, of bringing nothing to the table even in death, prevented him from merging with the Corruption that so eagerly wanted him. It was back, now, to give him a second chance.

“Do you see Prentiss?” Sasha’s voice, hurried and confused, forces him to confront the scene in front of him instead of wallowing.

“I- I- I…” Martin fumbles, torn, eyes scanning the ever-changing and expanding pile of wriggling mess.

“I don’t see her! I don’t see her! I… I don’t see her!”

Jon, head in his palms, tries desperately to think, to rationalize the situation. That’s what he was always best at, when things were tough or hard to explain. But none of this made any _sense._ He stares blankly down at the dusty wooden floor, breathing heavily.

“Jon? Jon!”

Sasha stamps at the ground with her flats, killing off maybe half a dozen more worms. She turns to Martin for direction. A decision.

He sees two ways out of this. They could run down the hallway, all the way out of the Archives, or retreat to his room. It’s soundproof, sturdy - the perfect temporary safe house. He has to remind himself this is temporary.

He does not make a decision.

He stands, frozen, stupefied and barely able to breathe. His hands are paralyzed around the metal of the extinguisher, and the handle digs into his skin with how tightly he grips it. His heart beats out of his chest and into his ears, each breath edging on a scream.

That is when things truly begin to spiral faster than Martin can possibly imagine.

Sasha gasps, and a subsequent scream tears through the wet and viscous stirring of gathering worms. She finds her foot surrounded by the horrible things, burrowing into the meat of her ankle and crawling up her back. Jon moves to say something, but she is already gone by the time anything makes it out of his mouth.

In her panic, she throws herself toward the still-open door, stumbling down the exposed hallway. Martin is barely able to manage “Sasha, stop!” before he hears the dreaded thud and crack of bone against the hardwood floor following a slip.

“No. No!”

Martin grabs a bewildered Jon by the wrist and tugs him fast toward the door, slamming it shut behind him. He knows it won’t hold, not if Prentiss is this determined, but he prays it will give enough time to recover…

Sasha.

A caterwaul of horror leaves Martin’s mouth before he’s able to stop it.

“Oh, my god! Oh my god! She’s dead,” he shrieks, hand flying up to cover his mouth. “Jon, she’s dead. Jon… oh, Christ, help me, I can’t feel my chest. Christ help us.”

Sasha’s body has so many worms piled atop of her it almost looks as if she’s not there at all. A single water-soaked flat has been launched across the hall, and Jon almost slips on the smattering of blood that’s been smeared across the floor; as if a giant thumb had reached down and crushed her head, it’s nail lingering to scratch the boards with deep clumping scarlet. There was no way she was alive. Not with the impact, nor the thousands of worms.

“No,” Jon whispers hoarsely, his eyes wide and pupils darting from object to object. “Sasha... Sasha.”

It had only been a few seconds, and everything had gone irreparably wrong. But it could only get worse.

The worms begin to find their way through the cracks in the large doors, their slick and slimy bodies popping out from underneath and blindly wiggling to their targets to feast.

“We need to go,” Martin manages, in a rare moment of composure. He forces himself to step around his friend’s body, which is slowly becoming less of a thirty-second corpse and more of a living, breathing nightmare.

He hurriedly motions Jon to follow him, sprinting down the poorly lit corridor and shoving himself into the temporary room in the Archives he’s been offered to stay in. He abandons all formality between the two of them, surviving the only objective now, slamming the door and sitting Jon down beside his cot.

“Are you okay? Do- well, do you have any on you? Did they get you, at all?”

“I don’t- no. I don’t think so. You haven’t been bitten?”

“I haven’t.”

There is a brief moment of tense silence, save for the rustling of garments as the both of them wordlessly inspect themselves for any worms taking a hitchhike on their clothing. Jon feels the buttoned shirt over his beating chest, an ever growing nervous hesitation blooming there as well as physical discomfort.

“Sasha…” Martin whispers.

“Not right now,” Jon breathes deeply. “Not yet.”

“Right.”

“Do you think… you know, Tim…”

 _“Not right_ _now._ ”

Martin falls silent. He turns to peek out of the blinds, worms starting now to crawl down the dim hall in search of new blood. He avoids the section in which they crowd Sasha’s body.

“I can’t see anything. No sign of her or anyone else.”

“Not even…”

Jon presses a palm against his chest, wincing a bit.

“An- an alarm, that we could sound? Something to alert those upstairs.”

“None down this hallway. And even if there were, it’d be a horrible idea to…”

A cough cuts through his faltering words. Jon sucks air through his teeth, massaging his left side with his palm. He purses his lips, eyes snapping closed in one large breath. Martin lets the blinds fall from his hands.

“Are you okay?”

“Oh, god,” he mutters. Jon’s eyes snap open quickly and he begins clawing at his chest, breathing impaired enough to panic him.

“Something’s wrong,” Martin insists. “I think… oh, no.”

“Oh, no, what?”

“I bit one,” he admits shamefully. “In half. When we were fending them off… I must have swallowed the other half. I didn’t think it would be an issue if… if it were torn-“

“It went in your mouth?” Martin cries. “Why wouldn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t think… no, I just thought… ah!” He fights for air, pounding on his aching ribs and coughing up small droplets of blood. Already, it has done damage.

“What’s happened to you? For god’s sake, where’s the worm gone?”

“I don’t know, but I think it punctured something,” Jon groans, “and I can’t breathe!”

He looks behind Martin, just for a moment, and moans in both agony and disappointment. He spins around to see what he’s missing, and the bad news that greets him is a hole.

Another dent in the wall. Nothing more, nothing less. And right now, worms are filing in by the half dozen, slithering in to meet their singular kin nested somewhere between Jon’s lung and shoulder blade.

“No, no, no, no,” Martin urges, fumbling now for his corkscrew and something to block the hole with, “please not now! Oh, Christ, please, Jon, stop scratching at your skin, you’ll only make it worse, just let me- let me find-“

He digs under the pillow, in his pockets, around the floor. Nothing. No corkscrew. Jon’s mode of frenzy was not helping, worms seeming to appear faster every minute, scrambling for any patches of skin they can hollow out and excavate. Martin throws a cabinet in front of it, squishing those crawling down the wall.

Everything is moving too fast. Won’t everything just slow down so he can make a decision?

Jon scoots backward out of worry that more might burst through the extra now-sealed entrance, pressing himself against the side of the cot. Though the worms here were in significantly lower numbers, without the proper equipment, or his compliance...

Jon wails something awful, pained cries leaving him with every scratch and tear of his nails in an attempt to prevent new punctures in his skin. He feels the invasive ones zipping underneath, ripping him new vessels and arteries. Making him home.

“Martin,” he orders, with less command than he’s ever had before. Begs, even. “God, man, _do_ something! Anything, just-“

“If you could _please_ just calm down, I can’t do anything if you don’t sit still!”

“I can’t!” He shouts, fingers flying to where the first worm travels, and others have entered, clawing raw scratches into his bleeding skin. “I _can’t_ -“

“Well, you’re going to have to, okay,” Martin exclaims, voice raising in pitch and just as strained, “or you’re going to die! And I can’t have you _die_ \- for god’s sake, please breathe, you’re going to hyperventilate!”

Wrong response. Jon’s breathing is reduced to heaving gasps, and Martin tries to stand, crushing the last of the worms on the floor; but a hopeless hand grabs at his arm, urging him down.

“Martin,” he instructs between heaves, “don’t leave me. Don’t leave.”

“I’m not. I’m not.”

He swallows hard, keeping his composure in fear of Jon spiraling worse. He closes his eyes and visualizes everything he loves about what he has right now. He has a steady job for the first time in years. He has friends - coworkers - that care about… well. That acknowledge him, sometimes. At least one of them did. But she died about 10 minutes ago.

And the one who he thinks he cares about the most is on the verge of death. Does he have Tim? For god’s sake, where is Tim? The initial worm refuses to cease its pathway to nowhere, wriggling too quickly and unpredictably to keep track of. It breaks the skin just once, on Jon’s back, and he scrambles to reach it in a frantic manner; but it digs its way into his skin once more before he can remove it, and he calls an agonized “Fuck!”.

“Martin,” Jon manages after what feels like another few minutes of struggle and search from them both (but must be only seconds), unable to beat back the pricking tears in the corners of his eyes out of sheer distress and pain. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

“Oh,” he breathes quietly, exigency fleeing his hope. “Jon, please don’t say anything like a goodbye. I can fix this if I can just find something- if I can- if…”

“I’m not saying anything,” he defends.

Martin has never kept his tears sparse, or hidden, for that matter. Even if he did, now would not be the time. He begins to cry, finding it hard to look Jon in the eyes when his usual frown is replaced with a terrible trembling of his lip. It’s a level of hopelessly pathetic he has never seen from him.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… god, I’m so sorry. I can’t understand how everything’s gone wrong. I don’t know what I did.”

“It’s not,” Jon gets out, waves of sharp soreness wracking his body in ways he can’t imagine. One of them must have burst something by now, he thinks, must have burrowed it’s way into his heart. His chest aches like nothing he’s ever felt before.

“It’s not your fault. Just stay here. It… god, it hurts.”

Martin fumbles for something to say. He stops himself from launching into a monologue. Often, he has wondered what he would say to him, in a situation such as this. He has never imagined he would have to hear Jon’s last words instead.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I know, Martin.”

The air is once again broken by a stark series of gasps and cries, clutching at his wrist and pulling at his graying hair. “What’s happening? What’s happening now?”

This, too, he already knows. The worms did not burrow further down into his heart or back into his lungs, as he had feared. It had found it’s refuge in his arms. At this stage, even if he wanted to continue patting his pockets for the umpteenth time in the futile effort of finding the screw, he would be unable to perform what was so sensitive it was essentially surgery. His mind tears between giving up and persisting.

Was it killing him, if he let him go? What else was there to do? He couldn’t open the door to rush him to the paramedics, or they would both be flooded with more than they could handle. He doesn’t know if he can handle seeing Sasha’s body again, or what’s left of it now. Was it his fault if he let him go? He doesn’t have time to answer, or even reach out for support.

Jon halts his screaming fit abruptly, body slumping against the cot and head lolling to the side as his desire to survive is rendered a memory. An artery has burst in his arm, an important one, set to kill him in less than a minute. His arms are dripping in rivulets of deep ichor, and the stench of death is fast approaching. Martin screams.

Something is deeply wrong.


	2. Closing a Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin is dispatched from his line of duty while the Institute recovers. A friend of a friend pays a visit and makes a deal.
> 
> (The friend, of course, is Michael.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No content warnings for this chapter! Just reminiscing on the last one <3 :-)

The next week is inexplicably awful.

The alarm was sounded by a newer employee, wandering the halls out of curiosity and startled by the infestation. Everyone upstairs had quickly evacuated, but not without a few small casualties, the former employ included. 

Elias, unfortunately still very much unharmed, has given him orders to rest. Whilst he finds new employees, he says, Martin has been given express permission to stay home, take care of himself, and take a break.

New employees. As if they were soldiers on the front lines of duty, tossed to the waves of the dead and filled in with new able bodies as soon as they were rendered useless. As if he’s ever going back to that stupid Institute. He can’t even think of the Archives without feeling the need to toss up whatever breakfast he could bear to stomach.

Jon and Sasha are dead. That much he knows. 

Sasha, of course. There was no doubt about that. But Jon had just been unconscious before. According to the medics, he had been dead before he even reached the building for treatment. Martin held out hope for a solid few hours, waiting by the phone for something. Anything.

The news wasn’t good. In retrospect, he should have known. Him and his stupid optimism.

His apartment is a mess. Not that it’s ever particularly spiffy in the first place, but it certainly isn’t ever dirty, the way it is now. He’s barely had the energy to make himself some sort of instant dinner without it exploding somehow because he’d forgotten to set his timer. Everything felt just slightly off, just inconvenient enough to chip away at his spirits and send him back to bed, to lay and think and grieve.

He’s in the middle of that routine now. A hot pocket lies in the bank of the spinning plastic microwave, a faint metallic buzzing filling up the unbearably quiet surroundings. He holds a mug of cold water, hoping he can heat it up next. Another bag of tea should cure his nerves. His eyes weigh on themselves with their puffiness, having gone through the third cry of the day. God, he needs a therapist badly, he thinks.

Until, without knocking, a door opens.

Martin yelps, startled. His microwave beeps, and a figure enters.

The static has been building behind his eyes for some time now. His vision flickers, because of the tears and because of who stands in front of him.  _ What  _ stands in front of him.

“Hello,” it says, warmly, “former assistant to the Archivist.”

He thinks it wrinkles its nose, though it looks more like paper crumpling in on itself. The stench of the Corruption was not, to it, a friend. It had ruined many of its plans, and it lingers, unwelcome, in this apartment.

“You,” Martin murmurs, half-sedated from shock.

“Have I already introduced myself?” It laughs. “Please, excuse me if I have. Time and place is a funny matter.”

“No.” He turns to face him fully, mug trembling in his palms. “I- I know you. Michael, I think. From, the, uh… the statements.” 

Sasha’s statement, namely. He is torn from his stunned stupor into the awful reality he’s been facing for seven terrible days. He stands unsteadily. Even fully upright, he does not come close in stature to the towering figure before him.

“What do you want from me? I’ve already lost everything,” he mourns aloud. “I think I’m going to die. I… I feel like it. She’s still out there, somewhere. Prentiss. She could show up and kill me.  _ You _ could kill me.”

He wavers. 

“ _ Are _ you here to kill me…?”

“Not,” it suggests with an unfurling finger, “if you come with me.”

A door. 

He can’t believe he didn’t notice it before. The monster before him points directly to an impossible, dandelion yellow door, wedged between the wall behind his kitchen table and the cabinets, frame melded in with the uniform beige of the walls. Open. Waiting.

“If you’re trying to trick me, you don’t want to.”

“Really?” Michael raises it’s eyebrows, another curious gesture. Martin’s just a little surprised it doesn’t tear him in two at his defiance. It doesn’t seem like that would be totally uncalled for, at this point. “Why?”

“Because… because my friends are dead, and… and I can’t leave. And I’m a mess. If you’re going to kill someone, pick someone who cares about an escape for himself.”

Michael pauses. Perhaps it did not adequately measure the level of despair Martin would succumb to so easily. Instead, he does what he does best, and laughs at him; a pealing, rippling laugh that sounds more like someone’s sigh into an echo chamber.

“That is where you misunderstand,” it hums, “this does not have to be real. The Archivist can escape, and all taken with him. His death  _ has _ been an inconvenience of sorts.”

Martin starts to listen. He repeats his question.

“What do you want?”

“Your assistance,” it lilts, “that is part of your title, is it not?”

“Not to you.”

“Then to who? Who requires your assistance?”

Martin refuses to answer. He looks down, guiltily, at the cup growing colder in his hands.

“I can help you,” Michael points, “help them, if you help me.” 

“What can you possibly do to help me?”

Michael wanders the room, eye contact no concern of it in making this deal. Martin can’t help but feel a little self-conscious of another person (or at least something that looks like one) judging his poor circumstances lately, especially given the fact that it seems to be frowning.

“I can help you rewrite what happened the day Prentiss seized your institute.”

That interrupts his melancholy. 

“What?”

Michael reaches toward a flower vase, the stems bending and twisting as the tips of its nails scrape their surface delicately.

“Don’t! Please.”

Michael, surprisingly, removes its hand, albeit slowly. It tilts its head for an explanation.

“Ah…. Um, please, don’t mess with those. Those are supposed to be for my mum.”

He feels quite silly urging a monster, who could easily hurt him very badly, not to ruin his bouquet. Michael furrows it’s brow.

“They are dying.”

It pokes a single browning petal and frowns further at the crunch. Martin doesn’t even have to look.

“I know.”

“Mm,” it responds. As if it understands.

The silence with two in the room is much worse. He works on changing the subject. 

“Will I die, if I trust you? How do I know you’re not lying to me?”

“How should you know, even if I tell you you won’t?” It walks - glides through air, more like, stutters through space - to the door it’s left standing in the midst of the mess. At least it’s away from Martin’s belongings.

“You cannot trust me. I am, by all definitions, constructed of lies. The very definition, if those who wrote it had known me. But I do need your help, you may follow me, and, I insist,” Michael pauses to choose it’s words, “that you to do so. If you want to see them alive again, that is.”

He does. He really, really wants to see them alive again. Perhaps against his own will, Martin steps toward the door, mind still numb and wracked with days upon days of nerves so taut they could play a violin in tune. The bounds of his world have been stretched by supernatural fingers, farther than even he could have expected he would handle. 

“How am I supposed to help you?”

“That is simple,” Michael nods. “I need a tape.”

“A tape?” Martin asks, puzzled. “That’s all you need me for?”

“Yes,” Michael repeats, only a touch of impatience painting it’s words. “A tape.”

That doesn’t seem too bad.

“Do I have another choice?”

“I suppose. You could move forward with the life you have now. But then, the Circus would prevail, or another unlikely suitor for the end of the world would tip the scales in their favor. Neither of which, I assume, you or I would prefer.”

He pauses for but a moment, considering Jon. Jon, who is surely dead. Jon, who does not know how far Martin is willing to go save them. To save Sasha, and him, and everyone he’d failed to warn faster on the surface of the Institute. 

Oh, god, he didn’t even think about how the others are doing. Right now, right here, he had a chance to change their fates, too. In some capacity, he knows Michael is right. Something awful lurks beneath everything he knows, and he could be waltzing right into its maw, another stupid human fallen prey to whatever all evil serves. His stomach stirs with anxious energy.

Now, he had a choice. An honest choice. Even if it led him somewhere awful, wasn’t it  _ his  _ choice? He had to take it.

Martin’s knuckles are white with how tightly his fists are balled, having set down the cup somewhere in his paces. He didn’t even notice he was so tense until he started swallowing back waves of red and liquid grief from breaching his cheeks. He presses forward.

Michael smiles. “Right this way.”

It enters the hallway, and it waits courteously for Martin to step through its corridors before shutting the door on the past of the deceased Archivist, his missing friend, and his similarly dead assistant forever.

And yet, something is still very deeply wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew!! Let me know your thoughts whenever you like! Socials are under @calliesbox wherever you feel the urge to look :-) <3! 
> 
> Expect a chapter this Sunday (and maybe one earlier in the week if I’m feeling absolutely mad)!


End file.
